Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A lot of us on here discuss the stories that make the setting of our favorite games, be it warhammer fantasy, warmahordes or warhammer 40.000 and there's various camps as well, we have the scepticists who view everything through the minute lens of canonicity, we have the fanboys who hardline everything and lastly we have the consummate consumers that find it all entertaining.

But that's not why I wrote this topic, it wasn't to discuss the consumer, it was to elaborate on the producer side.

Intrepid semioticists and producers of textual/audiovisual products know that to create meaning you weave a web of opposites in the narrative.
My favourite example is Superman vs. Lex Luthor.
If Superman is wholesome, good and moral, then Luthor is evil, amoral and indecent.
if Luthor kills, Superman doesn't.

Who is Superman? What Luthor isn't.
What is Luthor? What Superman isn't.

Now what most of you will probably have figured out already is that this narrative is easy on a small scale, but if you increase this scale tenfold things get very complicated fast.
Add a plot, add twists, changing of narrative due to character development and you get what is called a greek tragedy.

And this is where I make my point of posting this on dakka, Games Workshop has in the recent years hired writers and broadened their Setting, they started producing a lot of background information regarding historical, nay pivotal points in the history of the setting.
They did so, on a scale you normally expect out of greek tragedies, there are in any given book out of the horus heresy brand at the least 10 characters intervowen, you have an ongoing narrative and the plot is ever twisting and turning.

So when you ask for more books, when you criticise the timeline, keep in mind that the complexity is on a very intensive scale and that canonicity is defined by the producer, not the consumer

now where's my coolaid.

It's Kool-aid. It's a brand and a trademark.

I would agree, OP, if it were not for the fact that other franchises have shown that it is possible to establish rules of "canon", or at least guidelines on what kind of information trumps what.
The "issue", as some would say, is that the creators of 40k never intended for a single uniform version of the setting to be. Certainly, they write their own stuff and publish it in their codices and whatnot, but at the same time grant license to other authors to basically poach in their territory and come up with deviating interpretations. Even more: you as the gamer/reader are allowed to take possession of the setting in much the same way, and your own fan-fiction is not of lesser value than anything officially published under the label.

Some call this freedom. Others call it a lack of a common basis.

Needless to say, it makes it very tricky to discuss the background, simply because so many of us have read different things and thus follow different versions of the background. It seems obvious to me that many fans do desire a uniform background, even if only because then you can actually discuss it with other people, and because every little bit would then add to the greater whole rather than all those novels essentially being their own little worlds, their "parallel dimensions" (such wording was actually used by a THQ rep to explain why the hero in their Space Marine videogame was not the Captain that led the 2nd Company in GW's Codex fluff).

The worst part, however, is that apparently oh so many people still have not realised this. Just look at Lexicanum and its attempt to unify every source of 40k fluff under a single umbrella. And there certainly are lots of people pulling their info from there - and thus, ultimately, a "twisted" version of the setting, bent by the subjective interpretation of whatever wiki-author merged all those different sources into the single article.

I'm not complaining because I'm getting deliverence lost for xmas so they can just take their sweet time writing them. I think they should go back and rewrite Battle for the Abyiss (?) the TS Captain was fine but please change the rest of the characters.

If GW does not want it to exist, then it does not exist. That's the way it goes.

 Lynata wrote:
I would agree, OP, if it were not for the fact that other franchises have shown that it is possible to establish rules of "canon", or at least guidelines on what kind of information trumps what.
The "issue", as some would say, is that the creators of 40k never intended for a single uniform version of the setting to be. Certainly, they write their own stuff and publish it in their codices and whatnot, but at the same time grant license to other authors to basically poach in their territory and come up with deviating interpretations. Even more: you as the gamer/reader are allowed to take possession of the setting in much the same way, and your own fan-fiction is not of lesser value than anything officially published under the label.

Some call this freedom. Others call it a lack of a common basis.

Needless to say, it makes it very tricky to discuss the background, simply because so many of us have read different things and thus follow different versions of the background. It seems obvious to me that many fans do desire a uniform background, even if only because then you can actually discuss it with other people, and because every little bit would then add to the greater whole rather than all those novels essentially being their own little worlds, their "parallel dimensions" (such wording was actually used by a THQ rep to explain why the hero in their Space Marine videogame was not the Captain that led the 2nd Company in GW's Codex fluff).

The worst part, however, is that apparently oh so many people still have not realised this. Just look at Lexicanum and its attempt to unify every source of 40k fluff under a single umbrella. And there certainly are lots of people pulling their info from there - and thus, ultimately, a "twisted" version of the setting, bent by the subjective interpretation of whatever wiki-author merged all those different sources into the single article.

If we disregard thq for the moment and look at what GW is producing through their BL imprint we see that they are building upon continuity and canon, which is defined by them. THQ builds upon their own "alternate reality" as it's called, which is fine.
IF lexicanum wants to build an index of "40k fluff" it's up to them, granted i appreciate that source of information, but it's a wiki trying to unify different sources from various producers of 40k fiction, the canon comes from GW and only GW (Black Library is part of GW) and what I see often is that different individuals try to make the case that they are muddying their own water, I don't.
because to me it seems like they are finally defining and expanding the setting through various official outlets, which is a good thing, deeper worldbuilding = richer setting = happy casey.

Also, I believe that AD-B wrote about canonicity recently on his blog, read that and then look up marvels multiverse for understanding the hang of canon/continuity etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If GW does not want it to exist, then it does not exist. That's the way it goes.

hammer down! HUZZAH!

xcasex wrote:If we disregard thq for the moment and look at what GW is producing through their BL imprint we see that they are building upon continuity and canon, which is defined by them.

Pray tell, have you seen this definition?

Really, I do not see any supposed difference between THQ or Black Library, or Forgeworld, FFG and GW. They are all publishing their various versions of the setting, and that's that. Aside from some very solid basics (all Space Marines are male, the Emperor's body is a dessicating corpse, etc...), there is no actual continuity, as this would require the various authors to adhere to each others works. Which, by their own statements (including ADB's blog you mentioned), they do not do.

You could perhaps argue that a multiverse may offer several continuities, all limited to their own respective little worlds. In a way, this is what would apply to all those officially licensed 40k publications as well, just that unlike Marvel neither GW nor any of its dependencies or license-holders never hinted at using such an "in-universe excuse" to justify the contradictions. These different interpretations just exist. They are not "parallel dimensions" or something, they are just a different way of describing the setting - influenced by their respective author in much the same way as some historians' personal opinion has twisted the accounts of real world history. So yeah, what we are reading could probably be described as fairytales, legends or propaganda - the one thing they are not is "the one universal truth".

xcasex wrote:because to me it seems like they are finally defining and expanding the setting through various official outlets, which is a good thing, deeper worldbuilding = richer setting = happy casey.

See, that's just it - you cannot define and expand "a world" without establishing rules about canonicity and enforcing them throughout the franchise. GW's laissez-faire approach does not work that way, however. As I said, some people prefer it that way, as it allows them to cherrypick stuff they like and ignore the rest, or see their own ideas as just as valid as what it says in some novel or a Codex. But it's the bane of fans who would like to imagine a uniform representation of the setting, where every single product adds something to the greater whole.

xcasex wrote:Also, I believe that AD-B wrote about canonicity recently on his blog, read that and then look up marvels multiverse for understanding the hang of canon/continuity etc.

I did read that. I even quoted it here a couple times for discussions such as these.

ADB also posted on this forum, on this very topic, I think you may find this interesting as well. In particular this sentence, which I think sums up the situation fairly well:

Dead Blue Clown wrote:
"It's all true and none of it's true" means, at its core: "There is no canon. There's a variety of sources, many of which conflict, but every single one is a lens through which we can see the 40K setting."

Just click on the name to get to the thread; he posted some more on the subject.

Also, if you read Aaron's blog, did you see Andy Hoare's reply in the comment section?
"It all stems from the assumption that there’s a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or ‘true’ representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth."
- http://www.boomtron.com/2011/03/grimdark-ii-loose-canon/

And here's one more, from Gav Thorpe's blog:
"Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."
- http://mechanicalhamster.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/jumping-the-fence/

Honestly, that's all just excuse-making for haphazard publishing, incomplete guidelines, and lazy editing, lol.

But, it remains the sad truth.

 Lynata wrote:

xcasex wrote:If we disregard thq for the moment and look at what GW is producing through their BL imprint we see that they are building upon continuity and canon, which is defined by them.

Pray tell, have you seen this definition?

Really, I do not see any supposed difference between THQ or Black Library, or Forgeworld, FFG and GW. They are all publishing their various versions of the setting, and that's that. Aside from some very solid basics (all Space Marines are male, the Emperor's body is a dessicating corpse, etc...), there is no actual continuity, as this would require the various authors to adhere to each others works. Which, by their own statements (including ADB's blog you mentioned), they do not do.

You could perhaps argue that a multiverse may offer several continuities, all limited to their own respective little worlds. In a way, this is what would apply to all those officially licensed 40k publications as well, just that unlike Marvel neither GW nor any of its dependencies or license-holders never hinted at using such an "in-universe excuse" to justify the contradictions. These different interpretations just exist. They are not "parallel dimensions" or something, they are just a different way of describing the setting - influenced by their respective author in much the same way as some historians' personal opinion has twisted the accounts of real world history. So yeah, what we are reading could probably be described as fairytales, legends or propaganda - the one thing they are not is "the one universal truth".

xcasex wrote:because to me it seems like they are finally defining and expanding the setting through various official outlets, which is a good thing, deeper worldbuilding = richer setting = happy casey.

See, that's just it - you cannot define and expand "a world" without establishing rules about canonicity and enforcing them throughout the franchise. GW's laissez-faire approach does not work that way, however. As I said, some people prefer it that way, as it allows them to cherrypick stuff they like and ignore the rest, or see their own ideas as just as valid as what it says in some novel or a Codex. But it's the bane of fans who would like to imagine a uniform representation of the setting, where every single product adds something to the greater whole.

xcasex wrote:Also, I believe that AD-B wrote about canonicity recently on his blog, read that and then look up marvels multiverse for understanding the hang of canon/continuity etc.

I did read that. I even quoted it here a couple times for discussions such as these.

ADB also posted on this forum, on this very topic, I think you may find this interesting as well. In particular this sentence, which I think sums up the situation fairly well:

Dead Blue Clown wrote:
"It's all true and none of it's true" means, at its core: "There is no canon. There's a variety of sources, many of which conflict, but every single one is a lens through which we can see the 40K setting."

Just click on the name to get to the thread; he posted some more on the subject.

Also, if you read Aaron's blog, did you see Andy Hoare's reply in the comment section?
"It all stems from the assumption that there’s a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or ‘true’ representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth."
- http://www.boomtron.com/2011/03/grimdark-ii-loose-canon/

And here's one more, from Gav Thorpe's blog:
"Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."
- http://mechanicalhamster.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/jumping-the-fence/

then that's haphazard production.
alas, poor yorick, black library is a division of games workshop, formerly BL publishing, so yes, it'd seem that that's the case -- sidenote, BL publishing also had the Solaris publishing imprint producing "original works of SciFi" which was later sold to Rebellion Development. -- So as it relates to THQ and whatever else entities that have produced anything relating to the GW franchise, if it isnt under the corporate umbrella it isnt canon

Furthermore, I stand firm to my last post and that you should reread the contention of my OP